Nationwide (BlackNews.com) — Here’s a book unlike any other written on the subject of racism by a self-identified black racist. The author, Baye McNeil, is an African American living in Japan for the past decade. His sensational new memoir entitled: Hi! My Name is Loco and I am a Racist, has caught the attention of readers worldwide and has been causing an uproar in Japan since its release in January 2012.

The commotion has not been one of outrage, however. To the contrary, this passionate memoir has been called by readers, “one of the most honest, passionate, engaging and best written books about life in modern Japan for non-Japanese of any race,” and has garnered rave reviews from readers worldwide.

McNeil was born and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York where some of his earliest encounters with racism were as a child of the Pan-African / Black Power Movement. As a elementary student at a Progressive Pro-Black Family School in the 70s, between Swahili studies and Black History courses, his school’s hands-on approach to “social studies” often placed him and his classmates, placards in hand, on the frontlines of protest marches, boycotts and demonstrations against everything from police brutality and shootings of unarmed black children in New York to apartheid in South Africa and corporate-sponsored civil war in Angola.

In the early 80s, while Disco was on its deathbed and Hip-Hop was a Rug-Rat in diapers, the author was a teen member of a notorious urban cult which touted black superiority in a volatile community fraught with racial tension, and whose membership rolls held such illustrious names as Rakim, Big Daddy Kane and Poor Righteous Teachers. The author takes readers on a scintillating and informative journey through the heart and soul of America as a US Army soldier, which he characterized as “a propaganda pressure cooker” yet “a brilliant way to address racial ignorance,” and then back to NY for a bout with corporate bigotry as a University student in Brooklyn. It was at University that he experiences something so surprising and soul-rocking that it will racially alter the course of his life forever. At least, he thought so…then came Japan.

Prompted by his mind-altering experiences in the land of the rising sun, McNeil uses anecdotes and insights from both his youth and his years in Asia to highlight the insidious nature of racism, and the dangers of responding to it with apathy. In what the author describes as “an impassioned call to arms,” he urges readers to reconsider how they view racism. He warns that “if racism continues to be demonized as a dark aberration that only ‘evil’ people, ignorant fools, or people lacking common decency are subject to, then it will remain at large, hiding in plain sight, in our schools, offices, carpools, living rooms and sometimes even in the mirror.”

Hi! My Name is Loco and I am a Racist is currently available on Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com and at many other online outlets where books are sold, in both trade paperback and E-book versions.

For more details, contact Hunterfly Road Publishing at [email protected] or visit www.himynameisloco.com